Jul 6, 2011

Just another day on the farm

I'm a farmer. For three weeks. Jim and I are in charge of making sure our landlord's animals stay alive for 15 days. I thought this would be an easy task. I thought wrong. Did you know that chickens are extremely temperamental? I didn't. The first night, pitchfork in hand, I spent 30 tentative minutes trying to push the two remaining stragglers off of the porch and into the coop. I was sweating, cursing, sloshing around in chicken poop with hay stuck in my hair. Then there were the bunnies that kept escaping from their pen. We covered up holes and checked fencing, to no avail. Twice we trapped them in huge nets and transported their writhing bodies back to the pen. The last one got eaten by something before we could get to it. One down. The next to go was a sheep. I have no idea how it died. I do know that sheep are creepy when they follow right behind you in the twilight and bleat loudly. Like zombies. I'm shivering to think of it. Two down. At least the dog is still alive.